yoga the time-tested wisdom on healing

I request you to visit this site on yoga. I will keep trying to share my knowledge and views on yoga there.

Do pardon me if I carry some posts from here to that site.

Why am I leaving this fantastic community of squid? I am not leaving it but I will post less on this lens. This is because I am not able to manage so many sites. I have other preoccupations and use my spare time to do webwork. I opened a number of blogs, free sites and even lenses, but I find that I am not able to do justice to any of them; so, with heavy heart, I decided to focus on only two sites. The link to the site on yoga is given above.

Do visit me there. Do share your experiences. Do make the best use of yoga for health, wellbeing and overall happiness.

You will find numerous sites on yoga, many earning good sums by teaching yoga and selling yoga related products. My lens aims at promoting yoga free - absolutely free. In this direction, I will tell you about very easy steps to learn yoga, remove your misconceptions and doubts on yoga, also remove the mysticism people deliberately cover yoga with, and give lots of do's and don'ts so that you do yoga properly.
I wish you a very good health.

You will find it interesting in case you have had no tuck with yoga before.
Yoga is one of the most potent weapons to fight stress, and stress [whether due to physical or psychic reasons] causes a large number of problems including those of heart, blood pressure, head, digestion, glands, kidney, joints...
So, friends, if you have been affected by the financial meltdown, practice yoga and meditation. Let me state the obvious: it will not relive the physical loss, but it will relieve you of anxiety and stress and reduce emotional loss and further physical loss that might have happened due to health and family problems.
Which yoga?
Do simple relaxation exercises; practice anulom-vilom pranayama; sit calm and try to concentrate on a physical object / God / nothing: you can do these as many times in the day as possible - in office, at traffic lights, at home...

Yoga helps by rejuvenating your entire body [and mind and spirit]. Its most popular and easiest components are asanas and pranayams.
Let these strange words not scare you.
Asanas are easy-to-do exercises and pranayams are deep breathing exercises.
Regular and proper doing of asanas and pranayams tones up your system, especially if you have grown old without properly exercising your body, if you have abused your body and damaged your organs, and if you have chronic health problems that the doctors have not been able to treat.
Another small aspect about yoga you must know is that it is a system of healing, rather than a system of medicine. Its effect may not be as quick and apparent as a surgery or an injection, but it will heal you completely, limited only by your body's inherent/congenital limitations and the limits of your will-power and your faith in yourself.

Again, I will try to make them simple.

When you sit straight with legs crossed [ one upon the other], eyes closed, breathing naturally, with arms stretched on the knees, you are sitting in padmasana [lotus posture]. Sitting in this posture, you can do breathing exercises [pranayams] and do meditation if you so like. Just sit in this posture for a minute, letting only good thoughts come to you - you may like to think of your God also], and experience a new type of happy feeling in you.

Another, simple to the core, asana is shavasana [dead-body posture]. In this, you just lie down on a mat, breath slowly, keep eyes closed and relax your entire body. This is mostly done after doing a set of difficult asanas. Alone too, being in this posture relaxes your body like nothing else.

Surya namaskar literally means greeting the sun. It used to be performed by yogis [=masters of yoga] at sunrise.

Surya namaskar is a combination of 12 poses that gently bend the body forward and backward alternately. While doing surya namaskar, the practitioner does inhalation, exhalation and holding the breath as per yoga norms.

Surya namaskar is in a way all-in-one asana regimen. It helps in many ways to keep the spine and muscles healthy; exercising the internal organs; activating endocrine glands; balancing the three life-juices [vata, pitta, kapha] according to ayurveda system of medicine; rejuvenating the entire body.

I am not able to give pictures or video of the poses. I will soon give link to a site giving standard surya namaskar postures.

Sarvangasana, meaning asana for all organs, is perhaps the best asana discovered by the sages. For doing this asana, you can go through the procedure given here. For a nice commentary on this asana, look here.
WARNING: THIS ASANA IS NOT FOR AILING, OLD, PREGNANT PEOPE; PEOPLE WITH HYPERTENSION AND HEART DISEASES; PEOPLE WITH EYE PROBLEMS AND THOSE WITH BRAIN-RELATED ISSUES.

Doing yogic exercises daily helps in cure of many chronic ailments and malfunctions.
Cholesterol, for example, is a big health concern today, with a large proportion of population having high levels of bad cholesterol and triglycerides in blood. This leads to blockage of arteries which in turn results in life-threatening heart and arterial diseases.
There are many recorded medical evidences of yoga lowering bad glycerides and increasing good ones. One such empirical study by Patanjali Yogpeeth can be seen here.
I will soon give the asanas and pranayams useful specifically in cholesterol-led problems.

Nobody in the world has popularised and demystified yoga as Swami Ramdev, an ascetic and modern-age yoga guru. He has held camps in many countries including the UK and the US beside his home country, India.
What is the most likable thing about Ramdev is that he has made yogic asanas and pranayams into easily doable exercises. He also parades those who have benefited in a big way in his camps; these people are taken from the local crowd itself.

I have seen lots of stuff on yoga on the net. A lot of it is intelligent or not so intelligent adaptation of yoga. Some sites make you believe that bending spine to and fro or sideways, or swinging or breathing with unnatural patterns is yoga.
Yoga's asanas are standard procedures, with standard postures and standard ways of doing them. You have the legitimate liberty to adapt it according to your body type, health status, age, sex, etc; but experimenting with it is fraught with danger.
In addition, many sites [mostly the sites that sell stuff relating to yoga or sell training and lectures and CD's on yoga] claim a thousand benefits from yoga. They will tell you, it will cure you of all diseases, get glow on your face, treat you psychologically better than a psychiatrist, etc etc. What yoga can do to you depends on the way you do yoga, whether you are doing proper exercises, whether you are following do's and dont's and so on.
This post is not to dissuade you against yoga but only cautioning you to learn yoga from dependable people. You also do not have to spend much [or anything at all] to learn and do yoga. [I will talk of the genuine benefits of yoga sometime later.]

All gentle exercises [in fact all such activities] are prone to boredom. After all, the nervous tissue that makes our brain and sense organs wants to experience stimulation; gentle exercises by their very nature do not provide that type of sensual stimulus.

So, after some days of asanas, pranayams and other yoga procedures, you are likely to feel that things have become quite routine. Once the initial excitement goes down OR the discomfort or pain because of which you started yoga comes down OR you find the poses too simple and kiddish to be taken seriously OR you experience some pain or discomfort after starting yoga, YOU WILL NEED TO GOAD YOURSELF TO CONTINUE YOGA. In some cases one starts experiencing the benefits of yoga on body and/or mind and/or spirit from the very beginning; if this happens to you, do use this feeling to continue yoga. But if you have not got the desired benefits, keep doing yoga and trying to improve your poses and procedures. You can seek expert advice, including through this lens. But in any case, continue yoga for at least three months before deciding whether to continue it further or not.

You can do the following to make yoga more intersting:
a- doing yoga in groups
b- playing a soft music while doing yoga
c- joining yoga camps periodically
d- teaching yoga to children
e- doing your daily prayers while doing yoga
f- going to the next stage: experiencing joy and spiritual strengh through yoga

wiki page on yoga: though not very useful for practicing yoga
this nice site called a2z yoga
this site called yogawiz
videos on yoga
another good site on yoga
a good site with detailed articles
my blog on yoga

nude yoga

newsmaking yoga

non-existent kundalini yoga

unChristian yoga